Josh – Pensive maturity wrapped up with cheeky plastic

Today’s post is dedicated to my elder son (tomorrow my fei-chai, Jad). Yesterday, my kids had their piano lessons and the teacher wrote in her report “Very obedient and a keen leaner. Keep up the good work”. Josh is a really good boy, sans the times when he becomes cheeky. He’s cheeky alright and if given the chance, he would tease his little brother to no end, Jared being such a sensitive bloke and all. From their room, you can hear loud laughter and then whimpering and whining, then “Jjjjjoooooosssshhhhhh…….”, then “Mmmmmooooommmm……Joshua says that I got hairy armpits!”

I would say that Josh changed my life completely…from the moment he was conceived, he was destined to change me into a better person via a very rough route. We’ve been through a lot together and till this very day, although he’s a very reserved sort of person, he’s still my bestfriend. Granted, he’s just a kid and has attention span so short that I can barely keep him in my arms for more than a minute! I envelope him in a big bear hug, smelling his hair and just stroking the back his head and then he says, “Can I go now? I’ve got to finish the Pac Man mission – I’ve just got it figured out, mom” Sigh…. But Josh is an incredibly good boy although he isn’t too academically inclined. I’ve assured him that academic excellence is not everything because it takes ‘smarts’ to figure out ways to destroy monsters on the computer game as well. His cousins would all clamor over him, asking him to help them with their games. And it also takes smarts to create a monster out of the Nintendo Wii box. He beams as I said this and announced to his reflection in the mirror, “I’m a genius”. Talk about gloating, huh? Sometimes, when I look at him, what meets my eyes is an eight-year-old boy I want to know more about. I wonder how much of that six-month-old-ness is retained. The maturity in him makes him, sometimes, think beyond what he should as a kid; but that’s what makes him an inquisitive yet pensive child. For him, I just want to see him bloom in whatever he wants to do, to be good in whatever gift that he is given. Computer games not counted – but then again, if he tries, he might turn into another Facebook-like creator, you know. And Lord knows, this boy sure does love to create stuff. The moment he gets his hands on anything that I would rather remain in the rubbish, he would try to come up with something. Maybe he would have his dream come true too. His dream…to create a time machine so that when we are older, we can all take the time machine back to NOW and enjoy what we have now again and again…and again. :-)